Meet Charlie and How to Make Equine Treats

How to Make Horse Treats

As the coyotes have been howling again, and with all the new livestock around our little farmstead, I recently started to get worried about my creatures and what might happen to them. My poor little goats and piggies can’t do much to protect themselves! After looking into the various livestock guardians, I decided to choose something a little unusual…

Meet Charlie! Charlie is my sweet little 6 month old mini donkey. He’s just a big furry teddy bear and he certainly has known what his job is here on our farmstead from the day we brought him home. On his first week here he took care of one scary jackrabbit that was harassing the goats. I’m so glad we found him and he’s going to be a great addition to our farmstead for years to come.

Charlie is pretty happy eating whatever the goats and cows eat, with a bit of hay mixed in now that it’s winter, but I also wanted to be able to give him some little treats, especially since we are currently working with him to be halter broke. But treats at the local feed store don’t fit very well into my budget and we won’t be in town often in the winter so I decided to make him a little something using some food that I already had on hand. These treats are perfect for horses or any other kind of equine, as well!

Homemade Equine Treats

What You Need:

1 large Carrot

1 large Apple

1 cup Molasses

2 1/2 cups old fashioned Oats

2 Tablespoons Oil

Shred the carrot and the apple into a large bowl.

Add in the oil, oats, and molasses. Stir to combine well so that all the oats are covered in the molasses.

Pour the mixture into a greased 9×13 baking dish. Pat the treats down with a spoon or with your fingers so they are flattened into the pan. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes or until they begin to get crispy.

Remove the treats from the oven and let them cool for a while. The treats will harden slightly as they cool. Once they are hardened you can score into pieces.

Charlie loves his little treats! (The goats happen to love them too! I mean really love them…they will follow you everywhere until they get more!)

Merissa

Reader Interactions

Comments

What a cutie! We have coyotes in our woods and I know that any chickens or small animals would just be food for them. We have many neighbors with small dogs and no one lets them out alone at night anymore. All of the stray cats have disappeared from the area, too. Coyotes are really becoming a problem everywhere it seems.

Our son is allergic to dogs, he does fine with Charlie though. At night he can be out in the pasture if he wants or he can go in the barn, he usually sleeps in the barn with the goats. 🙂 He will go outside though if he feels like his herd is threatened.

He is adorable! I didn’t realize that they were protective (ours was a grain farm) I would love to have one but I now live in the city 🙁 Many hugs to your new addition (and thanks for all your information on living a clean real life).

I love your blogs. I am a former farm girl and truely miss the whole farm life. From raising our children with respect for animals and their place in our lives to all the strange pets they found to the appeciation and peace a hard days work can bring to everyone. Knowing we can do things we a lot of times think is for someone stronger, smarter,or even perhaps richer. It is a wonderful life and I cannot read enough of your blogs and always look forward to the next. Merry Christmas toyou and your family!

Thanks so much for the cute photo of Charlie! The receipe is great for people with animals; life is “at the beach” still here in Fort Lauderdale Florida, but I enjoy reading about life on the farm (my family is from farms in Canada). Keep up the good work you do, people like you make such a BIG positive difference in the world! Wishing you and your family all the best in 2015!

He’s a cutie,but a word of warning’ I had a Donkey and it attacked my
6 mo old son in his walker out in the yard. Be sure to have him Gelded.
Some attack other males. Mine never bothered the girls. Have a
wonderful Christmas’ So happy your new addition is legally yours’

I have to admit that this Donkey won me over, I love them. I am going to be featuring your post on my blog at Tuesdays with a Twist link party this week, make sure you stop by for a peek. Have a great week. 🙂

I’m definitely going to make some of those treats for my horses! They never seem to like the store bought ones very well. Also, do you really think a miniature donkey is going to do much protecting? I would think that you would want to get a standard sized donkey instead. Is there a reason you chose a mini?

He is an excellent protector already! Check out the videos on Youtube of donkey’s protecting their areas…it’s quite amazing! Mini donkeys actually aren’t that much smaller than a regular donkey, you might be thinking of a micro mini…those wouldn’t be good protectors. Cute though! 🙂

Miniature donkeys should NEVER be used as guardian animals- ever. They cannot protect themselves like a standard or mammoth and you are
putting their lives at risk expecting them to protect livestock. Charlie looks more like a standard than a mini in his photo….I hope that is the case.

actualy the smaller the animal the better they are for attacking (well in equine world anyway) especcialy if the are attacking larger animals.the smaller animals have easy access to crawl under the larger animals and kick them in the gutt and that would seriously hurt the bigger animal and maybe even twist their gutt

I just made these for Save the Brays Donkey Rescue (Barnum, MN) and they were crazy over the treats! I only had 1 cup of oatmeal so I substituted the rest with raisin bran cereal and some dry corn meal. It worked out great and the donkeys were following my granddaughter very closely as she had the treat bag. When temps are below zero like they are right now, the donkeys probably benefited from a couple sweet snacks in addition to the extra hay they are given in nasty weather like this.

To answer the above question from someone else, I just used vegetable oil.

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Welcome to Little House Living! My name is Merissa and it’s nice to meet you! Here you can learn how to make the most with what you have. Whether that’s learning how to cook from scratch, checking out creative ways to save money, and learn how to live simply. I’m glad you’ve found your way here. Make sure to keep in touch by contacting me with questions and signing up for our newsletters.